The World Beer Cup results have sparked plenty of conversation on the Internet. If your favorite breweries didn’t win anything it might be because they didn’t enter. You can’t be sure.
For instance, you might wonder, did SandLot Brewery at Coors Field, which won seven medals at the 2005 Great American Beer Festival, enter the World Beer Cup? (In this case we know the answer is yes.)
Or why in the world didn’t New Glarus Brewing in Wisconsin, a perennial winner at such competitions, win anything? We didn’t know the answer to that one until we saw this in The Capital Times:
Missing from this list of Wisconsin winners was the New Glarus Brewery, which chose not to enter this year.
“We have been so busy with our construction, which is kicking our butts, we just didn’t have time to get it together,” said brewery co-owner Deb Carey, whose husband, Dan, was honored this year by the Brewers Association for innovation in brewing and his commitment to the craft brewing industry.
Speaking of Wisconsin beers, the Beer Man in Appleton doesn’t pull any punches in reviewing a couple of new beers: Leinenkugel Sunset Wheat and Capital Island Wheat.
On Sunset Wheat:
I find it incomprehensible that professional brewers could make a beer that is so off, and it’s even more troubling that someone tasted this after it was finished and decided it could be sold. Something is not right with this scenario.
For the Capital beer it was more a matter of not living up to the brewery’s normally high standards:
The beer is just bland – there is nothing to pick out. It’s not malty and there is no hop flavor to speak of. The wheat component is negligible. This is a beer that will no doubt sell like hotcakes in Door County to tourists who want souvenirs, but that’s about it.
Credit to the Beer Man for being upfront about what he thinks about beers from his home state.